It's a beautiful spring morning here in Berkeley. You can hear the birds and feel the crispness in the air. And for those of you who are not vegetarians, smell the chicken frying that's wafting up from the Thai temple down the block. So I want to begin by reading you a very well-known case from the Book of Equanimity, the Book of Serenity, Case 20. Fayan was going on pilgrimage. And Dijon said, where are you going?

[01:03]

Fayan said, around on pilgrimage. Dijong said, what's the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayan said, I don't know. And Dijong said, not knowing is most intimate. So I think that every time we sit down to Zazen, we are on a kind of pilgrimage. We're on a journey into the unknown that is simultaneously new

[02:05]

and familiar. It's kind of like a dreamscape, you know, when you're in a dream and you realize that this is quite familiar, or familial, and yet it is new. and so on this pilgrimage of Zazen we encounter ourselves and we can encounter ourselves in ways that are fresh and that open us up or in ways that point out how we might be in a kind of rut But if we're doing zazen, to me it's always a pilgrimage.

[03:15]

So I was thinking of this koan and the notion of pilgrimage and the intimacy of not knowing. because I've just returned about a week ago from being away from five weeks in New Mexico at the Upaya Zen Center and I was wondering what I was going to speak of and somebody asked me to speak about that pilgrimage as it were. So I thought I would try to do that today and put that in a kind of context of my life and our lives. The larger context for me is that, as some of you know, I'm

[04:28]

towards the beginning of a year of exploration, discernment, a lot of which is internal, finding out what I perceive to be barriers in myself, obstacles that may stand in the way from me, being truly connected to people in my lives which is you and also you know at the age of 66 to take a pause and consider how what might be best use of

[05:35]

the time, the unknown time that remains to me. So I've begun that, and that itself is a mysterious pilgrimage, because in certain ways I don't even really know how to look at it. If you have any advice, please talk to me afterwards. But one of the things that I've been doing for the last year and a half, I was invited to be in the core faculty for the Upaya Zen Center's chaplaincy program, the program that was begun by Roshi Joan Halifax. It's been going about six or seven years, and she asked me to join as a core faculty member, which means I'm at the chaplaincy intensive trainings twice a year for about 10-12 days and I collaborate with her and at this point I sort of have a clear idea of what my role and responsibility is, which

[06:57]

took a while for me to see that, and I'll say something about that. So, I was at Upaya for the first two weeks in March as part of the chaplaincy intensive, and then I was there for another three weeks as a residential teacher, which I probably won't talk as much about, which was interesting. It was sort of like a retreat for me. It was very quiet. There were no programs going on. It was basically just being with the residents there and sitting Zazen three times a day, which is three times a day is good. You know, it's like that changes your energy. And meeting with them for Doksan, eating meals together, and it was very settling. But what I want to talk about today is this chaplaincy program because I've been thinking about what it means and why this is something that I think we need in the world.

[08:18]

I was looking up the derivation of the word chaplain today and at least one of the proposed derivations goes back to the 14th century when a soldier was carrying the cloak of Saint Martin into battle and he encountered another soldier who was shivering and cold And the word cloak, capella or capa, I guess in Italian, is the origin of the word chaplain. And in encountering this soldier he, to shelter him, he cut the cloak in half and gave him half. And so what

[09:25]

evolved as a usage or meaning is in a sense a kind of sacred cloak that one wears that's offered by someone. A chaplain is someone who offers that cloak. And that resonates with what I've experienced in chaplaincy. For me, I think that the core principles are just being present, just being able to show up in a room or a space with someone, meeting someone who is in need. In that encounter, without making too much of it, we can create a kind of sacred space.

[10:38]

We do that with ritual. We do that with the ritual of listening, of being open to hearing the person. I think we do it by a kind of accompaniment, just a simple statement of whether it's spoken or not, of being there with the person. And I feel that I've had the gift of experiencing that myself from the standpoint of being in need. I had a very serious illness about 13, 14 years ago and I noticed in the course of that illness that there were constantly people coming and going into the hospital room

[11:51]

uh and sometimes that became kind of exhausting uh and but i i noticed that there were people who did nothing they didn't have to do anything they just were there and they were comfortable in their own skins in such a way that I was really grateful for them just being in the room. It wasn't necessarily that they were talking with me or listening to me. They could sit in a chair and quietly read a book or read something out loud while I drifted in and out of consciousness and it was a really remarkable experience.

[13:01]

I was pretty tuned in to this energy and you know it wasn't necessarily the people that, it would be surprising, it was people who weren't necessarily the ones who my closest family, not to disparage them, but it could be somebody, it was a couple people that I didn't actually even know that well, but afterwards I felt intensely connected to them for just being able to show up. So it's this accompaniment, one of the teachers in the Upaya chaplaincy program, Fleet Mall, describes it as coming alongside. As if, you know, as if you were, as two boats kind of approach each other.

[14:10]

And one of the teachers in our extended family Kobinchino Roshi, he said that compassion is the activity of walking with another side by side, not too fast, not too slow, same speed. So you can walk sometimes if the energy is there you can embrace or dance, but for that time in that space there's a connection and a kind of merging. So that I think is, that's kind of my understanding of what chaplaincy is and it's not so different from what we

[15:14]

can offer to each other here in the community of Zen practice. Sometimes it's a matter of words, very often the deepest kind of contact and I find this again and again and it's a great reminder for a person like me who thinks of himself as a verbal person that the most telling connections are not about words. They're just about how we may do something with each other, how we may serve, literally serve the food as we had today, or cook together, or do a ceremony, or even how we sit next to each other, side by side, in Sashinse and we notice kind of the creaky legs and grimaces of ourselves and each other as we're getting up and we're connected in this human way.

[16:41]

We're wearing the same cloak were cloaked in this commonality of connection. So, the context, I think, for... Upaya Centenar was begun by Roshi Joan Halifax, and it's quite beautiful. It's in Santa Fe. The buildings are sort of that incredible santa fe and architecture that has no square edges you know everything is rounded mud and timbers uh the zendo uh i think of this place when i'm there because the it has these huge timbers much larger than these that are holding up the

[17:45]

holding up the walls, but it's something about the, oh, these are, you know, it's held up by timbers, this is in our family, you know. These four timbers are like family members to me. the place is in the tradition that came from Maezumi Roshi and Roshi Bernie Glassman. And so when I think about this question of the purpose of pilgrimage and the intimacy of not knowing, it brings me back to these three tenets that Bernie Glassman has been using as a core of his practice over the last 20 or more years.

[18:55]

They've evolved a little, but they still have the same essence. And these are the three tenets of Zen Peacemaker. These are just three tenets for practice to me. And the first one is not knowing. Not knowing, giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and others and the universe. And the second tenet is bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world. And the third is loving action. towards ourselves and others. So I think that if you think of it as a process, even though it's not a step-by-step approach, not knowing is where it begins to enter each moment

[20:08]

without a fixed idea of what it is or without an idea of one's own prescribed role or responsibility. So it's very much in keeping with Suzuki Roshi's dictum of beginner's mind. As we've heard many times, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. and in the expert's, but in the expert's mind there are few. So it's entering, not knowing is entering each situation with beginner's mind. It's not, I want to be clear, it's not knowing nothing, it's not being stupid, you know, it's just knowing that the situation that one enters is more complex and more variable than our preconceptions suggest and that we can be open to it going in any kind of way it's going to go.

[21:28]

So when you walk into a hospice room in any venue of chaplaincy, it is really helpful not to know. You don't know who you're going to encounter, you don't know what their state of body or mind is going to be and you should be ready for anything. My own experience And you should know where your sticking points are. So, I've been working in prisons for a long time, and what I find is that I don't have much problem working with the prisoners.

[22:31]

That's not where my difficult edge is. The problem that I have is actually getting past the front gate. Because you go to the front gate and the guard could be having a real... the guards, they are guards, they are gatekeepers. You know, you have to show them that you are okay to go in. And that's their job, you know, which I respect. But they're also institutionalized. and sometimes it is not fun, sometimes they can be rude, they can be abrupt, they can have their own opinions about who is this guy who's coming to teach meditation to these criminals. and you know you can encounter anything or they could just say sorry you can't go in you know you've traveled for an hour you've gotten there say no we're on lockdown and so in order to be able to accept that with some kind of openness of mind generally I'll sit for about five minutes in my car and breathe

[24:02]

and just tell myself, hey, anything can happen, and this is also a human being that I'm encountering, and to treat him or her respectfully. What I've noticed is when they're in their effective mood, and I think this also applies in a military context, So people they'll address you as sir, people have this experience, men anyway, and I realized that I've actually internalized that and I often refer if I'm having an encounter with anybody like in a store, I will refer to that person as sir. I do it a lot.

[25:05]

It feels okay. It feels like a kind of recognition of we're in a relationship together. I'm requesting something. You're helping me. This is my expression of respect. Not a word I ever ever used in the first 50 years of my life. So there's not knowing, going to the situation not knowing and then there's bearing witness. It's like once you enter this situation you need to pay attention to what's going on there and recognize that I like this expression, bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, suffering is not enough. We have this reductive way of, it comes from the four noble truths, the second noble truth that life is suffering, well it's also joy.

[26:19]

And that they're sometimes not very far apart. They're not very far apart in our Zazen. It can just be the difference between an in-breath and an out-breath. And the very people who are suffering in one's presence can also be have a moment of joy, a moment of freedom, relief, release. And those who are in joy, in the midst of that joy can touch their suffering. For example, in the midst of the joy of seeing my children, Ah, which is a great joy.

[27:28]

I often have moments of grief that arise of the fact that my parents never met them. My parents are gone and they'll never get to know these beings that flow from our family. and so it's as if the joy and the suffering come up together and to bear witness means to endure whatever perception arises to endure that in that circumstance And then the third tenet is loving action, healing action.

[28:35]

So in the face of what one encounters by bearing witness, which is also what one encounters in dokasan, what one encounters in practice discussion from either side, from the student side or the teacher side, because they're not separate. from the psychologist side and the so-called client side. The essence of this loving action is the conscious or unconscious ability to turn towards each other and not turn away from each other. And again, I've talked about this a lot, I think that the fundamental training that happens in this room is the ability to cultivate that for ourselves.

[29:46]

Can we turn towards ourselves in whatever moment of mind, whatever emotion, whatever affliction, whatever joy arises, can we meet and accept and merge with ourselves? In other words, entering with no idea, checking out what's going on, and then accepting it. as what's arising in this moment. Can we do all that? If we can do all that within the context of zazen, which is, I think, what the activity is for me, then we are training ourselves to be able to do this in ever-widening circles in our life.

[30:52]

and so to me the chaplaincy program that I see at Upaya is an extension which is why in that chaplaincy program we sit Zazen three times a day and people are expected to do Sesshin. It's a Buddhist program and it enables you And it's an interesting, the other dimension of it, which I haven't spoken of, is on the one hand it goes very deep inside. It's a two-year program. So two 12-day retreats each year. And the first year is really designed to focus on inner work. So the first year is like the going inside. And then the second year focuses more on what the so-called outer conditions might be.

[32:05]

And this, I think, one of the unique approaches of this program is that it sees itself as an engaged Buddhist program, which means that there is a basic understanding that if you're working in a prison, if you're working in a hospital, if you're working in the military, wherever you're working, you're functioning within something that's systemic or structural. and you are part of that system. You know it's like I always remember a story Lori told me about a friend of ours who was driving around Berkeley and she was getting furious and her little daughter was in the back seat you know just like what is all this traffic and she was ranting and yelling and their little daughter said but mommy

[33:17]

we're traffic too. That's a systemic analysis. So to look at that in this wide way and to recognize that a lot of the systems especially in these institutional settings, you have systems that are designed to be helpful to people who are in crisis. But a lot of those systems are pretty fucked up, you know, and pretty dysfunctional. And how do you work within, I mean, there's so many people, if I look around this room, there's so many of you I know, have to reckon with this every day. and it's not because bad people have bad intentions or they're not good people, it's just we could go back and back and back and try to figure out what the causes are, but I think one way to think of it is the systemization of our own actual individual suffering and our desire to sort of

[34:37]

We desire to get rid of it in a personal way and so we project it on larger structures. That's oversimplifying, but nonetheless we have to deal with these structures. And so I think this is one of the things that I really like about the Utpaya program. There's a lot more that I could say about it, but certainly you can look it up for yourself on the Upaya Zen Center website. But Upaya, the name is really good. Upaya means skillful means. The Bodhisattva's skillful means. And that's what we're and my role there, which I feel like I'm settling into now, is interesting.

[35:48]

I'm defined as I'm the core faculty, so I'm whatever that means, you know, so I'm teaching some basic Buddhism, I'm teaching the Four Noble Truths and the precepts and some engaged Buddhism, but inhabit there, which I really appreciate, is just being available for the people in the program. So talking with them, taking walks, talking over meals, doing dokasan, but being personally a figure of this structure that has a particular pedagogical role. It's more just being there, which to me is a way of being there with a warm presence and embodying what I feel to be chaplaincy.

[37:01]

It was very interesting, this is kind of where I'll close, but whenever I travel someplace, my first few days are very difficult and I want to get out of there quickly. I think I've spoken of this before and when I got to Upaya we sort of plunged right into the program and I felt quite overwhelmed and I felt like I wanted to check out and I thought about that and I realized one, that it was quite familiar to me. This is how my suffering seems to... it's a manifestation of my suffering.

[38:04]

And I actually asked myself, what do you want to do about it? How are you going to bear witness to that? And what I noticed was that there were a whole bunch of people there who were also uncomfortable having you know all arrived a lot of them some of them come in great distances and I asked if I could did I ask myself do I have the capacity to be present for them with warmth and attention. And if I could do that, might that be beneficial to me?

[39:11]

And I was pleased to find out that was the turning thought. that not knowing what I was doing the linkage between not knowing and the intimacy was just a matter of shifting perspective and that changed the whole thing So I'm reporting this to you, I'm not boasting, I'm reporting it to you because I sometimes think of myself as a tough case and just to say that we have the capacity

[40:22]

to enter, not knowing, to bear witness and to turn towards loving action. I really believe that and it's what we're practicing here. It's what we're cultivating to take into the world and you can call it chaplaincy. This is a formalized practice because there are institutions that being truly human. That's all we have to do. So, thank you very much. We have a few minutes, five minutes for questions or comments and we have a chaplain in the front row. Well, I'm delighted and grateful for you calling attention to this dialogue that I would like to see happening more in the profession of chaplaincy.

[41:29]

My experience personally, and just in talking to a lot of chaplains, is that the profession is in a state of a kind of ethical crisis, which has a lot to do with, for me it brings up what Hannah Arendt talked about, is in the banality of evil, structural evil, so to speak. and what is the hair's breadth between acknowledging that we are the system and at the same time, what is my responsibility? What's the deal breaker moment if there is such a thing? Personally, I've had two experiences of these in the last year, including being terminated from a position I just started as a chaplain. with a major healthcare institution here, and I'm finding that the jobs that are posted now, of course many of them are with this major institution, and so each time I have this practice of needing to write the reason I left the job as part of the application, and you know I have many chaplains who said, oh just don't put down

[42:45]

that you work that job because you were terminated on the 29th day of a 30-day probationary period, which I didn't even know I was in until I was terminated. But of course when you're applying to that employer, there's only two choices. Don't apply for that job or speak to it, turn towards it, so to speak. And so each time there's a not knowing. The intimacy for me is, I guess my question is around this Herod's breath deviation of, you know, like in Ukraine right now, you know, this has just been going on and on on Facebook of people sharing this and commenting on what is the deal with Jews being either asked or forced to register and what does that mean and so on. and then people say it's a hoax. It's a hoax. But the point that it's not a hoax is the issue that it raises which is calling attention to what's my responsibility being the system to step back and sometimes be silent and bear witness and sometimes bearing witness like a pillow in the middle of the night the loving action is if you see something say something and so I'm wondering what

[44:12]

if you might speak to that. The problem with the model of the pillow in the middle of the night, and that's a koan about what does the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara do with her thousand hands and arms, it's like reaching for a pillow in the middle of the night, that's a really, it's a powerful image, and it's a powerful image for me, but in the context that you're speaking, We need friends. This is where, if we're dealing with a systemic or structural issue, then I think the logical thing to do is to create some alternative structures. and don't go it alone.

[45:14]

So, how to do that? That's doable, but I think you have to meet those structures, at least with some innovative and fluid structures of their own, so that you're not alone. Because if you're alone, you get steamrolled every time. Well, what was so frustrating in this situation is that there's actually a Northern California Chaplain's Peer Group within this major organization, who in the end had no voice in that whole, and I was working with them. So my experience of what you just said is that our individual groups also need to have bridges. They may. They may. It's an endless job. Thank you. Thank you for persisting. Questions? Charlie? In the world of first aid, it's stop the bleeding, start the breathing, treat for shock.

[46:24]

Is there an analog in chaplaincy? Not that I know of. Judy might know more. What you have, I think, is you're working within a system in which certain of these medical or certain of the religious needs are getting met by other aspects of the organization. So I think that the fundamental thing is just to be able to be present with people when you come. You're not there to stop the bleeding, but you are there to be able to encounter what suffering or trauma they're experiencing.

[47:26]

Martha? This is a really wonderful topic, and thank you. I wonder if part of the being there with someone, just being present with someone who's in distress, it seems that human beings need other human beings near them, and that the deep anxiety of being in a very life-threatening situation in particular, but others much less so, is the anxiety of being abandoned. Yes. So that was, you know, it's interesting. We had this... I was teaching the precepts and there's this idea that

[48:31]

talking about with people about a North Star precept. You know, the precept that you can always find to reorient you, to get you going in the right direction. And the one that I taught was, I will not abandon you. And it's hard. because it doesn't necessarily mean I will save you, and it doesn't necessarily mean I will give you everything you think you want. It just means I see you, I will not turn away from you, and I can't necessarily fix what's going on, but I will not abandon you. stay, hold you in mind and in presence until the end.

[49:41]

I think that's really, to me that's critical principle, not just for hospice, but for community, for our relationships. I think that's really, actually there's one more, yes. I didn't see you ask that. I would say it's not so much that we need other people. Can you speak up, please? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm usually quite soft spoken. You can feel free to repeat what I said afterwards if it's not loud. It's not as much we need other people, but it's what you described as chaplaincy. It sounds like you're being a person and to try to keep yourself in its context and be there to remind the person that whatever they're going through is also that.

[51:02]

You've got to be very careful. So did you hear what he was saying? He was saying, if I've got it, that part of the role might be to remind a person of, to experience Buddha nature, remind a person of Buddha nature, and that that's what's also manifesting. Is that correct? Yes. Not explicitly by your manner. I think from my perspective what I would say is that this buddha nature is all pervasive, that it's not your buddha nature and my buddha nature, we all partake of it in a holistic way and that's for buddhists. Now you may walk into a room. A chaplain is called to mean whoever.

[52:12]

Right, right. But they mean much the same. But you just have to be careful. You have to be careful not to convey a sense that whatever you're experiencing is okay. for his buddha nature it just that can be a really uh uh that's not an easy thing to hear no and it but it's not some people for some people it's exactly the right thing and for a lot of people it's not whether it's true to the extent to which it's true or not uh we shouldn't we shouldn't stand on a position of truth we should stand on a be that person's connection. Right, and the connection to me, at least in terms of the way I think, is that we are partaking of this greater reality of Buddha nature, whether what's going on is good, bad, right or wrong is another aspect of it, it's another angle to look at.

[53:33]

I think we've got to, let's end there. We can continue over tea and cookies. Thank you very much.

[53:44]

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